Lucky for Burlington, Bill Truex Jr., had a long layover in Copenhagen on a flight to Rome in 1962. The late local architect, then a student, spent a day and a half exploring the Danish capital and encountered a traffic-snarled central plaza. When Truex revisited the plaza on his way home four months later, the area had been transformed. The cars were gone, and it had become part of Strøget, the city’s premier pedestrian-only shopping area. Despite frigid weather, people packed the plaza.
“It was like magic,” Truex recalled in a 2012 interview. “It was just this incredible fairy-tale environment.”
Seven years later, Truex, then chair of the Burlington Planning Commission, began lobbying to turn Church Street — the region’s retail center — into a similar pedestrian district. He was joined by street commissioner Pat Robins, whose family owned McAuliffe’s, which sold toys, books, stationery and office supplies on the street. Their proposal gained a sense of urgency in the mid-1970s, when the Pyramid Companies announced plans to build an 87-store mall in nearby Williston. “We knew immediately that we’d lose our whole downtown area, no doubt about it,” Burlington’s then-mayor, Gordon H. Paquette, told the New York Times in 1978.
Pyramid’s project never got beyond blueprints. But in 1979, University Mall opened in South Burlington, offering shoppers climate-controlled comfort, acres of free parking and a reason to leave Burlington.
Prominent downtown merchants got on board with Truex’s vision, and Burlington’s answer was soon in the works. In July 1980, the city permanently closed two blocks of Church Street to traffic. The Church Street Marketplace — two brick-lined blocks between College and Cherry streets — officially opened on September 15, 1981. The top block, between Cherry and Pearl, was added in 1994, and the bottom block, home of city hall, in 2005.
The marketplace has become the retail engine, social center and soapbox of the city. It remains a must-visit for tourists; a magnet for teens; a cash cow for buskers and vendors; and a well-traveled route for parades, protests, marathons and fun runs.
Venus Williams played tennis with locals on the marketplace in 2007. President Bill Clinton strolled the street in 1995. And in 2003, when former Vermont governor Howard Dean rolled up his shirtsleeves and announced he was running for president of the United States, the steeple of the street’s namesake church was the backdrop.
Church Street remains a city street and is overseen by the Church Street Marketplace Department. A nine-member commission sets policies. Property owners along the four blocks pay a fee for enhanced services that include maintenance, marketing, and trash and snow removal.
The four blocks have changed over the years. The local department stores that once anchored the street, Magrams and Abernathy’s, are gone. In their place, eateries, boutiques, and tattoo and cannabis shops have taken root. Some national chains have left: Woolworth’s, J.C. Penney, Eddie Bauer and Ann Taylor among them. Others have replaced them, including Brandy Melville, Lululemon, Urban Outfitters and Banana Republic. Lippa’s Estate and Fine Jewelry recently announced that it’s moving to Colchester after 93 years on Church Street.
Retail outlets have blossomed there and in other suburban towns such as Essex, South Burlington and Williston. Three of those towns, state data show, now outperform Burlington in taxable sales.
City officials and downtown merchants today worry less about suburban shopping centers than the social ills that have plagued Burlington in recent years. Symptoms of the opioid epidemic and Chittenden County’s intense housing crisis are evident downtown, where panhandling is common and the city’s fire department regularly responds to drug overdoses. Even national news outlets have highlighted the city’s problems in recent years.
Despite all that, the marketplace has proven remarkably resilient over nearly four and a half decades, even as other pedestrian malls have failed. Of the 140 that popped up across the country between 1959 and 1985, only 45 remained by 2020.
In the early days, businesses clamored for a spot on the marketplace, Robins, 87, recalled. While about a dozen storefronts are currently empty, the area still hums with activity year-round. Roughly 1.5 million visitors annually stroll its bricks.
Every Vermonter, it seems, has strong opinions about Burlington and Church Street — including people who say they no longer go downtown. On Monday, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak stood on the marketplace and announced that, after years of struggle, “Burlington is back,” striking an optimistic tone.
As summer begins and Church Street draws some of its biggest crowds, Seven Days decided to document a day in the life of the marketplace. What actually happens when bridesmaids from out of town, homeless people, soccer fans, students and shoppers converge on a few blocks?
On Friday, June 12, we sent a team of reporters and photographers to find out. This is what we saw.
Friday, June 12
5:58 a.m.
An hour after sunrise, the bell at Burlington City Hall tolled six times, punctuating a chorus of chirping birds on a warm and muggy morning. A golf cart used by the marketplace’s maintenance crew was parked in front of city hall. A few people walked past locked retail stores where headless mannequins stood sentry in the windows. Up and down the street, tables and chairs, highly sought-after real estate on summer afternoons, sat empty, cabled together like hostages.
6:47 a.m.
A man toting a black garbage bag and two paper bags from Trader Joe’s worked his way north along the street, checking trash and recycling bins for bottles and cans. One set of bins yielded a single can, though the man didn’t dig very deep. There was too much food waste, he said, and he didn’t want to leave a mess on the street. The man said he needed money for food, and he collects returnables every day. He was carrying about $4.50 worth, along with a sleeping bag that dangled from his shoulder.
Some people don’t want the glass bottles because they’re heavy, he said. “Me? I don’t care.”
6:56 a.m.
Sitting cross-legged on the bricks between Bank and Cherry streets, Justin Densmore used a yellow marker to color in a happy face on his “Anything helps, God bless” cardboard sign. “I’ve been trying to raise up, trying to find jobs,” he said.
The 43-year-old Burlington native said he once earned $20 an hour renovating homes, but his boss fired him after she saw him panhandling. “I explained things to her, you know: ‘Life ain’t easy. You gotta do what you gotta do to get through.’”
He writes song lyrics in a notebook while he sits, and he sang a few lines: “Nose, nose, nose in the air. Just, just don’t care.” Passersby who don’t acknowledge him inspired the tune, he said.
He asked: “How hard is it to say ‘No’?”
7:21 a.m.
At 7 a.m., workers removed the bollards that block traffic from the marketplace so delivery and repair workers could drive in. A UniFirst driver with chef’s uniforms, aprons, towels and table linens waited to be let into Leunig’s Bistro & Café. Other delivery vehicles arrived, lining the street as workers wheeled produce, beer and liquor into restaurants. By mid-morning, the street would be closed to vehicles again.
7:51 a.m.
A marketplace maintenance employee flicked bits of debris into a butler, a freestanding dustpan. He’s part of the three-member maintenance team that keeps the street tidy and inviting. The workers reset bricks, clean up dog poop, refinish benches, and string twinkling lights in the trees and pennants across intersections. They work every day but Christmas. One’s been on the job 18 years; another, 14.
8:45 a.m.
Two 17-year-olds, Mathias Mmunga and Hassan Kassim, stopped outside Northfield Savings Bank at the intersection of Church and College streets. Kassim wanted to make a deposit before the two headed to Downtown Burlington High School for Mmunga’s last full day of his junior year. Kassim, also a junior, had completed his classes the day before. He wanted to watch Mmunga and other friends give their year-end presentations.
The bank didn’t open until 9 a.m., so they sat on a rock to wait. Kassim is saving for a car. How much does he have?
He smiled. “Not enough.”
9:14 a.m.
Lance St. Arnault sat on his heels in front of Pascolo Ristorante looking down at a 5.5-inch granite square engraved with the name of his late half brother and the years that he lived: Shawn Gero-Drew, 1993-2023. St. Arnault’s key chain, which carried a tiny heart-shaped pendant holding Gero-Drew’s ashes, lay on the bricks. The man hanged himself while imprisoned at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. He was 29.
Anyone can pay to engrave one of the granite blocks on the marketplace. St. Arnault, 38, held a cigarette in his left hand and made the sign of the cross with his right. He flicked debris off the stone that his family purchased and rubbed his fingers over his brother’s name. The two had their differences, he said. The sentiment engraved on the back of the pendant reflected their better days: “I love you to the moon & back.”
“We used to always sit on Church Street on nice days like this,” St. Arnault said. “We’d play Magic cards and Pokémon.” For people like St. Arnault, this is sacred ground. “I want people to realize,” he said, “that some of these stones are more than just stones.”
9:15 a.m.
A black Burlington Bagel Bakery truck stopped in front of the local chain’s shop, mid-block between College and Bank streets. Co-owner Hayden Fersing, 27, got out and went around back to operate the mechanical liftgate. He had three mobile pan racks full of dough to get inside — and quickly. The dough can’t take the heat. Coming back for the second rack, Fersing paused. He thought he recognized a man standing nearby who was toting a tent.
“Did you go to BFA St. Albans?” he asked, maneuvering the metal rack off the truck.
The man said he had.
“I think we had art class together,” Fersing said. “You used to give yourself tattoos.”
The man, who identified himself only as “Zander,” was, in fact, covered in tattoos. He said he had recently returned to Burlington after hitchhiking across New England.
The former classmates chatted briefly. “Don’t be a doomer; be a bloomer,” Zander said, offering a farewell and his personal motto.
“Don’t be a doomer; be a bloomer,” Fersing repeated. “Put that on a T-shirt.”
9:42 a.m.
Inside the bagel bakery’s kitchen, Brady Robert, 31, dunked a tray of cheddar-jalapeño rounds into a vat of boiling water. He stirred them briefly, forgoing a timer.
“They boil ’til they float,” he said, scooping out the batch moments later.
Cheddar-jalapeño is the shop’s most popular variety, and the 30-bagel wire basket out front was running low. But another batch filled it up.
“They probably won’t need more than this for the rest of the day,” Robert said.
10:10 a.m.
Just up the block, an early shopper breezed into ECCO, and her posh outfit caught the boutique manager’s eye. The woman wore pointed-toe stilettos with red lacquered soles, the signature of luxury brand Christian Louboutin. “Where are you going on a Friday in those shoes?” Bonnie Smith asked. To work, said the customer, who bought a gift card and left. Smith said, “Those are $900 shoes!”
10:23 a.m.
A woman was sprawled on a bench facing city hall, her head hanging back limply. Her eyes were closed, her mouth agape.
“Hey, are you OK?” a reporter asked loudly. The woman sat up briefly and swayed but didn’t answer. The reporter dialed 911.
When three paramedics arrived about 12 minutes later, the woman gathered her things and walked away. The emergency responders headed back to their truck, their radios chattering.
“That’s the effects of the high,” one said.
10:41 a.m.
Inside the Grey Jay restaurant, around the corner from Church Street on Pearl, Cara Chigazola Tobin loaded “Cheyanne,” a black foldable wagon, with supplies bound for her marketplace restaurant, Honey Road, four blocks south at Church and Main. Her load included two 32-pound buckets of labneh, 12 jars of pepper paste, several stacks of thin Lebanese markook bread and half a dozen gallon-size plastic bags filled with frozen portions of housemade mana’eesh, a focaccia-like bread topped with za’atar.
Once a week or so, Chigazola Tobin, executive chef and co-owner of both acclaimed downtown eateries, pulls the wagon — the type suitable for beach necessities — the length of the marketplace and back. The sharing ensures neither place runs out of items.
“Sometimes it’s spices; sometimes it’s linens,” Chigazola Tobin said, maneuvering the cart down a ramp at the Grey Jay. “It’s just random.”
On a hot day like this one, she tries to make the trip early. Produce can wilt during the 10-minute walk.
“I like seeing what’s happening on the street, how the different blocks are feeling,” she said.
Chigazola Tobin arrived at Honey Road to the sound of sirens. She paused and watched the paramedics interact with the woman on the bench who stood up and left.
12:25 p.m.
Outside Rí Rá Irish Pub, black metal tables and chairs sat empty beneath the bar’s awning and the string of miniature national flags that stretched across Church Street. A placard advertised the evening’s World Cup match, but fans had yet to arrive. The day was growing hotter by the minute. Along the brick marketplace, pedestrians gravitated to the shade under store awnings.
12:52 p.m.
Natalie Ross flipped through racks of consignment gear in the basement of Outdoor Gear Exchange. On this sunny day, she was looking for a rain jacket for her upcoming Alaska cruise. Then she spotted it: a black North Face with a tailored fit, going for $30 — exactly what she wanted. She had hoped to avoid buying new, for both environmental and financial reasons.
She turned it once in her hands. Only one question remained: Would her daughter, a rising junior at the University of Vermont, approve?
1:47 p.m.
Adrian Palatino dug around behind the counter of Garcia’s Tobacco Shop for a Sharpie. This is his first year in charge of the store, though he grew up watching his parents run it. Regulars arrived at a steady clip and drifted toward the back, where the store’s cannabis dispensary now drives much of its business. Cigars still sell, especially in summer, when graduations and celebrations fill the calendar.
Palatino was helping a familiar face, a homeless person who passes his days on Church Street. For years, the man had sat outside the shop’s entrance in all kinds of weather, wearing his signature jacket with the Kellogg’s cereal logo. The man had disappeared for a few years, but the moniker Palatino uses for him — Kelloggs — had stuck.
Kelloggs had come into the store and asked to borrow a marker. Palatino handed him the Sharpie. “Anything helps,” Kelloggs wrote on a piece of cardboard, then capped the marker and handed it back.
“Thanks, man,” he said, and walked back out.
2:10 p.m.
Seated behind his vendor cart, parked in its assigned spot near FP Movement, Joshy Pellerin leaned over and squinted through his gold-framed glasses at the watercolor in his lap. Staring back was Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, his signature smirk frozen on the page.
Pellerin was still filling in the details of Ventura’s face, but he already knew the painting would join the amalgam of pop culture and Vermont emblems emblazoned on the T-shirts, hats and hoodies he had created, swaying from his cart in the warm breeze. He envisioned a Hawaiian shirt as the new painting’s ultimate canvas.
A woman in a tight orange dress stopped, snapped a photo of a shirt displaying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and American Flatbread’s Burlington storefront, then kept walking without interrupting her phone conversation.
Pellerin, who was wearing headphones and listening to a podcast, barely looked up.
2:50 p.m.
“How’re you doing, my friend?” Matthew Hogg called out as Jeremy walked into Float On Cannabis, one of three dispensaries that front Church Street.
Jeremy, who declined to provide his last name, had phoned ahead. He had $20, and Hogg, the manager, was ready with options: Gush Cream Cake, Super Magnum Woman and Double OG Chem, a dense outdoor flower. “Your lips will be sticky after this one,” Hogg said. Pre-rolls were also available, he added.
Jeremy wasn’t interested in those. “Ain’t nothing like the flower,” he said.
Hogg worked another angle: Join the loyalty program, and he’d knock $5 off.
“I’m homeless, but I’ll do it,” Jeremy said.
Hogg paused. “You have cash?”
Jeremy did.
They settled on a gram of Double OG Chem and another of Super Magnum Woman, for a total of $19. Hogg weighed the cannabis, handed the bags over the counter and checked Jeremy’s license.
“We’re a no-judgment zone,” he said.
Jeremy tucked away his purchase and ID. “I’m gonna have to come back when I get some more money,” he said as he headed toward the door.
“Best of luck to you, my friend,” Hogg called.
3:29 p.m.
Adrienne Noyes had already pierced an eyebrow and a tongue earlier in the day. Now the owner of the Prik, which doubles as a tattoo parlor at 23 Church Street, squatted outside, chalking a colorful message on the bricks. “Happy Friday,” it proclaimed in pink and blue block letters embellished with a sun and a heart.
“I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while,” she said.
A bald man wearing sunglasses smiled and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Thank you so much,” he told her. “It’s beautiful.”
3:46 p.m.
Inside Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop on the street’s top block, friends Avery Slayton, Gretchen Day and Evie Lane sat around a small table with the remnants of a brownie sundae. The young women, rising seniors at Morrisville’s Peoples Academy, had made the hourlong pilgrimage to Burlington to shop after a half day of school.
Their main destination was “Brandy” — short for Brandy Melville, a trendy chain that opened on Church Street last year and has been criticized for its exclusionary “one-size” — read: petite — apparel. Slayton, Day and Lane were aware of the controversy but said the brand was their favorite. The tantalizing smell of waffle cones had lured them into the ice cream shop.
4:45 p.m.
A gentle rain started, then became a downpour. A man standing in front of city hall stepped into a garbage bag he’d fashioned into rain pants. The 59-year-old, originally from upstate New York, said he’d been sleeping in a sitting position on a Church Street bench for about a month. Beside him, a metal cart strung with bungee cords contained his belongings.
“This cart has a lot of miles on it,” he said, pointing to its duct-taped wheels.
The man described his painful medical condition — “water in the legs,” he called it — which makes it hard to be on the streets. Local service providers had tried to find him a hotel room, he said. “It’s impossible. Everything is booked.” Besides, he added, “I’d rather save hotels for the people who need it.”
One block north, pedestrians gathered under an awning outside Leunig’s, waiting for the shower to pass. A skinny woman wearing a bra and pink miniskirt, shopping bags slung over both shoulders, bounded past, kicking a metal dog bowl stationed outside the restaurant’s front door into the middle of the street.
The sun soon reappeared. A woman with long blond hair that was pink at the ends laughed as she sailed a boat fashioned from paper, a paper clip and Scotch tape down a stream of rainwater in a sunken section of the bricks. She watched it float away.
“You gotta connect with your inner child,” she said.
5:11 p.m.
A dozen or so shoppers perused blankets, robes and button-downs at Vermont Flannel.
“You guys, these are the best socks for hiking,” a woman told her companions, gesturing to a Darn Tough display.
Chris Kuhn, a resident of St. Paul, Minn., lingered near the front of the store. It was his wife’s birthday, and he couldn’t go home empty-handed. After deliberating for a few minutes, he decided on a classic flannel shirt in hues of purple, blue and red and headed to the register.
5:28 p.m.
Chris Morash cradled a guitar on a bench in front of Harbour Thread. The self-described nomad wore a half-buttoned, short-sleeved plaid shirt; shorts; and flip-flops. A bowler hat perched on his head appeared to have been crafted from woven leaves and sticks. According to Morash, it was made of “happiness, love and magic.”
Busking is harder than ever, he lamented. He said getting permission to play music on Church Street required jumping through multiple hoops, including a background check.
“Last year, I went and got a permit, and they told me I had to move every hour,” Morash said. “Someone actually has the gift of happiness and tries to share it with people, and we want to sanction that?”
A teenager carrying a takeout container stopped to say hi.
“Hey, Big C,” he said. “This guy’s a legend. You need a permit to be a legend now?”
“Yep,” Morash told him.
“That’s tough,” the teen said.
Three young people towing wagons pulled up. They were members of the Burlington Food Train, a grassroots group that distributes supplies on Church Street.
“Hi, Chris,” said Ashleigh Provost, who founded the food train with her dad three years ago.
“Hey, how you been?” Morash asked. “What are you guys delivering today?”
“Waters,” Provost said. “You want a water?”
“Sure, why not? Thank you,” Morash said.
“I love Chris and his beautiful music,” Provost said. “Great to see you, Chris. Stay safe, honey,” she added, before continuing down the marketplace.
6:27 p.m.
A bearded man in brown loafers and khaki pants was walking and talking into a camera. It was Franklin County State’s Attorney Bram Kranichfeld, cutting a campaign ad. A cameraman walked backward in front of him, and an aide kept the way clear. A former Burlington city councilor, Kranichfeld is running against incumbent Sarah George for the Democratic nomination for Chittenden County state’s attorney.
Kranichfeld, running to the right of George, a progressive Democrat, aims to position himself as the law-and-order candidate. In campaign speeches, he’s cited problems downtown, and he has said his family has felt unsafe at times on Church Street.
Kranichfeld told a reporter that he chose the marketplace as the setting for the ad because it was “the engine of Burlington.” The problems downtown, he said, “affect our ability to be in community with each other.”
6:48 p.m.
A man approached a Seven Days reporter who was sitting on one of the two ski-lift chairs repurposed as a bench at the top of Church Street. “Do you live around here?” he asked, and then launched into a story about how his girlfriend had suffered two strokes and his car was broken down; he had money — he produced a wad of folded bills as proof — but not enough to get it repaired. Could he get some help? The same man had made the same request of the same Seven Days reporter on Church Street several weeks earlier. Both times, the answer was no.
The man shook his head. “I don’t get it, man,” he replied sadly, then walked away.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman approached the lift chair. “Got a couple of extra dollars you could spare?” she asked.
7:23 p.m.
Sweetwaters’ outdoor dining area was bursting at the seams, and diners filled the al fresco tables across the street at Rí Rá Irish Pub, too. Sweetwaters employees lugged plastic pails of ice from their restaurant to the neighboring one across Church Street, which, owing to crowds, needed a little help keeping up with the demand.
The live music had ended just down the street at Red Square, and a DJ blasted Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” to no one in particular. A disheveled man held out a hand to a reporter as he passed by, revealing cannabis. “Twenty-dollar bud for $10,” he whispered.
7:53 p.m.
Two sisters, ages 2 and 5, clambered up the boulders in front of Insomnia Cookies as their mom, Lara Provost, watched. The family had come downtown to get a pesto pie at Mr. Mikes Pizza, then capped the meal with cones from Ben & Jerry’s. The girls’ pink outfits were flecked with chocolate ice cream that had dripped from their dessert.
The family, from South Burlington, hadn’t been to Church Street for a while, Provost said; she’d been avoiding the area.
“Church Street felt kind of barren for a little bit, and every single time I came down, I would have a weird experience,” Provost said. “Now it feels like it’s kind of back to the way it used to be.”
Nearby, a gaunt woman in ill-fitting clothes set some belongings on a bench. She held a sign: “Homeless but still a human being.” People strolling past didn’t give her even a passing glance. After 10 minutes or so, she moved on.
8:21 p.m.
As twilight gathered and the mesh of lights suspended in the trees along Church Street glittered to life, gusts of wind occasionally shook overhead banners.
At the end of Thorsen Way, as Thai in the Alley hummed with diners, Clare Nelson crouched in a corner holding a black-tipped paintbrush up to a white metal door. Nelson was there on behalf of Arts So Wonderful, a public arts nonprofit, to beautify a quiet corner of the alley.
She had met individuals from many walks of life while painting murals, she said as she worked on a landscape of streets, buildings and vehicles.
“I love doodling cityscapes,” she said. “It’s fun for me to think about … how all of these different aspects of the human experience are forced into an environment together and supposed to interact with each other, but it’s frequently chaotic and awkward.”
9 p.m.
Just off the marketplace, a few hundred people sat on blankets and lawn chairs in City Hall Park as the World Cup game between the United States and Paraguay kicked off, projected on a large screen. Pink clouds streaked the sky as the sun set. A cool breeze blew, and the park smelled of wet grass.
Several minutes into the game, the U.S. team scored a goal, and the crowd erupted into cheers.
On Church Street, the sound of the televised play-by-play spilled from bars and restaurants. Fans wearing soccer jerseys packed Rí Rá, where the game played on TVs that encircled the room. The floor was sticky with spilled beer.
An American player dribbled across the screen toward the opposing goal, and the energy in the room grew. The crowd let out a collective “OOOH!” Then a Paraguayan defender kicked the ball away, and the bar patrons sighed a disappointed “Aaahh.”
In the final seconds of the first half, the U.S. scored again. Everyone jumped to their feet, clapping and yelling. A group of friends put their arms around one another and belted an American anthem: “Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong! West Virginia…”
10:40 p.m.
In City Hall Park, Yuniesky Cruz was slinging Cuban sandwiches with his wife and cousin from a food cart adorned with the Cuban flag. This was only the second weekend the three Cuban immigrants had served food downtown after several years of scrimping and saving.
A customer walked up and ordered a pan con bistec, a steak sandwich. The odor of grilled onions and meat wafted from the cart. Cruz’s wife, Mailin, handed over the sandwich, warm from the panini press.
“We’ll be out here as long as there are people,” Cruz said in Spanish.
Behind the food cart, children played in an illuminated splash pad. A group of young people stood in a circle kicking a hacky sack.
Around 11 p.m., a last-minute goal from the U.S. brought the score to 4-1. The crowd whooped.
“This is beautiful shit right here,” one man holding a beer said to his friend. “I love it!”
As the crowd packed up and people started to clear out of the park, someone spoke into a microphone: “Thank you all for being here! It’s 11 o’clock, and you’re in City Hall Park. It’s amazing.”
11:51 p.m.
Three young women strolled unsteadily along Church Street after an evening in downtown bars. They walked arm in arm beneath trees festooned with white lights. Outside Insomnia Cookies, they hesitated. Inside, revelers were treating themselves to decadent ice cream cookie sandwiches.
The giddy trio decided to head home for pizza instead. “We’re ready to call it a night,” Aisha Thapaliya said.
They felt grateful to live in such a vibrant city, they said, one they hadn’t visited much while attending Middlebury College just a few years earlier. Now they live blocks from Church Street. “It’s nice to be within walking distance of everything we need,” Ellie Cady said.
Saturday, June 13
12:16 a.m.
A steady procession of college-age people made its way south on Church Street. One group of young women chanted “JP’s! JP’s!” over and over, though they had a dissenter.
“Devin is at Akes’!” one woman pleaded. “I have to be at Akes’!”
“Fuck that short king!” one of her friends replied, laughing. “For real, it’s JP’s.”
Akes’ Place, it turned out, was already at capacity, with nearly a dozen people lined up to get inside. The doorman, Mike Snook, sat on a barstool and beckoned the next group forward. He scrutinized an ID a young man handed him, then held the piece of plastic off to the side and shook his head. The message was clear: Get lost, kid.
The young man with the unconvincing ID looked back at his four buddies and shrugged. “Oh, well,” he said. “To Red Square we go!”
Snook has been checking IDs for more than a year. This one was terrible, he said, sounding offended.
“It’s 2026. We have AI. And that’s the best you’re coming with?” he said. “It might as well have been glued on!”
Lower Church Street was packed with partying people. Everyone seemed to be either with a significant other or looking for one. Several couples argued; one dispute in front of Phoenix Books appeared to be heading for a proper breakup.
12:46 a.m.
Jilib Jiblets food cart, parked on Church near Main, was ready to dish out Somali food — sambusas, goat stew, fried chicken — but had few customers.
“Bro, this is the nice time. I can relax a little,” owner Said Bulle remarked, flashing a wide grin as he took in the scene outside Red Square. “Come back closer to 2, and you’ll see. I won’t be able to talk, bro! But you’ll see how it gets.”
12:45 a.m.
Eight police cruisers and SUVs converged on City Hall Park, where a crowd of spectators lingered after the World Cup game, along with homeless people. Asked what was happening, a police officer smiled awkwardly and said, “Sorry, I’m not media-trained,” and walked away.
Police started questioning and detaining people on College Street. As they handcuffed a man, many of the people in the park screamed in his direction.
“Stop fighting them, Mark!” a woman clutching a backpack yelled.
“If we go back over there, they’re just going to kick our asses again,” another man cautioned the group.
A female officer appealed to people to let officers do their jobs.
Eventually, the crowd dispersed, and the police left. Not long afterward, the park was hopping again.
1:55 a.m.
In advance of closing time, the bars near city hall disgorged their drinkers, and many headed north up the street. Several coeds walked briskly, determined to make last call at Three Needs on Pearl Street.
“What was that about?” one girl asked a young man.
“I don’t know, but he was really out of line, right?” the man replied.
“He kept touching my shoulder, and I was like, ‘What are you even trying to do right now? Just let it be, dude!’”
Two of her friends wrapped her in a group hug, laughing.
“I fucking love you!” one of the women exclaimed. The hugging trio listed from side to side like a ship in a storm, navigating up Church Street.
2:15 a.m.
Said Bulle was right. A long line had formed at Jilib Jiblets, and a busker played a keyboard beside the cart. The post-2 a.m. food options downtown are limited, more than one person in line noted.
Across Main Street, a throng of hungry partyers showed up at Ahli Baba’s Kabob Shop.
A middle-aged man in a freshly stained white polo shirt turned to a companion who was smoking a joint.
“Do you just want to order a pizza at the Needs?”
“Nah, I’m good,” his friend replied. “I want the chicken. What time is it, anyway?”
“I gotta go, man. I gotta eat, or I’m not making it,” the man in the stained shirt said, and shuffled off.
3:03 a.m.
A man on a Harley performed a rolling burnout in the intersection at Church and Bank streets, spinning his back tire while the bike stayed in place. The tire screamed against the asphalt. Blue smoke and the odor of burning rubber wafted down the block. A passenger hopped on behind him; he revved the engine again and, this time, took off.
3:47 a.m.
At the top of Church Street, just outside Brandy Melville, Jesse Hillman jammed on a miniature electric guitar hooked up to an amp he’d plugged into a streetlight. He said he’s the front man of a band called Jesse Hillman Project Freaking Out of Control 24/7/11 Concert Series Experiences Going Down on Church Street and Every Sexy Broad Backstage After the Show. He repeated the name.
“It’s a bit long, but it looks great on a T-shirt,” he said. “Our merch guy just killed it.”
Speaking of T-shirts, he wore a notable one: It depicted a grinning skeleton emerging from a flaming abyss with a middle finger raised, saying, “OK, Libtard. Where is the clitorus [sic]?” He’d found the shirt discarded on a greenbelt.
Hillman lives just a few blocks away, in the Elmwood Community Shelter also known as “the pods.”
Hillman said he prefers to busk late, when passersby are more inebriated and there are fewer panhandlers. Their growing presence has made it harder for buskers to earn money, he said. He always hopes to get tips from those who like his music, but sometimes he ends up with more slices of pizza than dollars, he said.
“I can’t buy a pack of cigarettes with a piece of pizza,” Hillman said.
As Hillman spoke, a woman pushing a grocery cart with luggage and cardboard in it paused at a drinking fountain shaped like a fish. She filled a water bottle repeatedly and washed her arms and neck. And then she started arranging and rearranging the items in her cart.
“It’s more or less just missionary work between me and God, and I love the city very much, and I love the community,” Hillman continued. “And so, I’m here every night just trying to save lost souls.”
4:45 a.m.
Once the bar crowds and food trucks were gone and Hillman and his companions had left, the marketplace quieted. As the sky began to lighten, the older man who’d made his own rain pants the previous day slept sitting up on a bench by city hall. Up the street, a few people wrapped in blankets dozed at the doorstep of Ken’s Pizza and Pub.
The woman at the top of Church Street continued circling her shopping cart, keeping vigil over her belongings. A shirtless man roamed the area, arguing with an unseen presence.
Outside Red Square, a man grunted and made weird, wordless vocalizations. He shuffled around, oblivious of his surroundings. His shorts fell down around his ankles. Then his sneakers fell off, and his shorts followed. He stumbled up the street in nothing but a T-shirt, dark socks and underwear. A man passing by on a bike noticed the discarded sneakers on the bricks, picked them up and pedaled off.
Two Seven Days reporters approached the shoeless man as he lay on his back outside Green Leaf Central, a dispensary on Thorsen Way; he had gotten his shorts back on. When asked how he was doing, he responded “Great!” He said he was waiting for the dispensary to open.
5:58 a.m.
The new day was bright. A few early risers walked their dogs on Main Street. Seagulls took to the air overhead.
Here and there lay traces of the previous day’s shoppers, sports fans and partyers. An empty vodka bottle stood upright on the bricks; a few shards of broken glass awaited the cleanup crew; and the shoeless man’s belongings — bags holding beef jerky, snacks and water — were scattered on the bricks.
A Myers garbage truck sighed its way along Bank Street and crossed over Church. Atop city hall, the bell chimed six times. ➆
Contributors to this article include: Jordan Barry, Hannah Bassett, Aaron Calvin, Ian Curry, Chris Farnsworth, Colin Flanders, Mary Ann Lickteig, Kevin McCallum, Alison Novak, Matthew Roy & Lucy Tompkins
More Scenes From Our Day on Church Street
The original print version of this article was headlined “24 Hours on Church Street | As the iconic marketplace approaches its 45th birthday, we spent a day there with our eyes, ears and notebooks open. Spoiler alert: Lively scenes ahead”
This article appears in June 24 • 2026.
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